A Year in Gettysburg

Here I am! I'm still alive! You may have started to wonder, but I'm still here.

I've been very busy...yeah, I know that's not a very good excuse, but I hope to explain some of that in this post. But where do I start? I've been absent from here for what. Almost a year? Much too long.

Well, I've gotten more active in some events around Gettysburg. In October I attended the Civil War Trust's event for the Lee Headquarters grand opening. That was exciting. My grandfather and I were able to attend the event, it was a beautiful day (if but a bit chilly), and best of all (drum roll please) I got to meet Garry Adelman! (For those of you who may be new to the blog, Garry Adelman is a historian, Licensed Battlefield Guide and the director of Education for the Civil War Trust. He puts together many of the "In4" videos discussed in some of my articles. I'm kinda obsessed with him.)
Okay, well, I took a selfie with him. Is that a formal introduction? Maybe not....


                                

                                 

GETTysburg! GETTysburg!

 I started wondering the other day if I would have to change my vocabulary to re-enact. Did Americans use contractions? I started fretting that I would mess up and be a bad representative if I spoke like modern day.

Doing some researching, I found that contractions have been around a lot longer than I thought. So they're safe. (Another reassurance is I had forgotten about the word "ain't", a slang contraction for 'am not' or 'is not' and prevalent during this time period.)

We'll never be able to completely explain how they talked in the 19th century, since none of us lived in that time. However, below is a video I just watched that address this topic.